Poland - butter is noble

Pascal (33, celebrity chef, TV host, cookbook author)

We meet at Pascal's apartment. Pascal prepares asparagus spears with butter:

PASCAL: "Butter and other fats have always been treated with contempt. The thing is that their role reminds me very much of the role of potatos. We treat both, potatos and butter, as fillers and don't think too much about their quality or characteristics. I was taught at cooking school of the importance of 'invisible ingredients' that are used throughly in the cooking process and then not really visible on a final dish or dominated by other particular tastes used by the cook"

As a professional cook educated in France I think of butter differently than it is thought of in Poland. Poles treat butter with no respect, like air. In France butter is much more important. The French prepare tastes, like garlic and have different butters for different occasions. One could even say that, given strong culinary regionalisms and diversity within the country, there is a strong butter eating culture. French really have diverse butter preparing patterns and think of it as a very particular diary product that is meant to be finished at home or prepared in accordance with an inhouse recipe by a given restaurant.

I would say that butter in Poland is simply disregarded and treated the same as salt and, let's say, beetroots. This has to do with general Polish attitude toward food, which is best depicted as fulfillment rather than pleasure. Poles do not really know the pleasure and joy of cooking, eating and the whole table culture. I think it is due to the terrible history of that region and years of culture decline and poverty.

For me butter is noble and I think one day Poles will reach and internalize conviction.

Poland - of the importance of butter

Magda (c. 50, celebrity chef, TV host, cookbook author, restaurateur)

MAGDA: "I have always treated fats as incredibly important. They are somewhat like glue that makes dishes and recipes stick together and allow other ingredients to combine easily"

BUTTER IS AN INGREDIENT

Magda serves (pyzy z mięsem) and (kluski leniwe z masłem) for me:

MAGDA: "Ages ago, when I opened my first restaurant, U FUKIERA [one of the most famous Polish restaurants and the oldest one still operating - MŻ] I had no idea of the importance of small things. Now there are multiple books one can reach to and get to know how important small things are, like Anthony Bourdain's "KIll Grill". My people simplky went to the supermarket and bought one of the butterpacks available back then. Food was of high quality anyway back in the early nineties and given the competitive circumstances it didn't matter that much that we used standard store products.

At some point, middle nineties maybe, my restaurants, three back then, were evolving fast and I decided to put an accent on perfecting each element of the restaurant process. When it came to butter, we -- my cooks and I -- suddenly realized that a lot of our failures in taste and consistency came from that area.

We therefore looked for the best butter we could get and this is how we got to the Wyszkow Diary Products, a traditional company that didn't go into highly industrialised processing and didn't settle for compromise when it came to quality.

This very strict attitude brought multiple economic problems on that company and signing wide contracts with me and then other restaurateurs from Warsaw probably saved the company. The butter and other diary products from there are still in use in each of my restaurants and present in most of my dishes.

I also use it on TV and in my cookbooks. I think that it's important to help companies like that -- the ones that care for tradition and quality".

Poland - good food for sports, health and diversity

Agnieszka (30, entrepreneur, company co-owner) and Mariusz (31, entrepreneur, company co-owner)

This young marriage became fans of good food after a course at a well-know Warsaw based Kurt Sheller's cooking Academy, which they participated in back in 2007. They chose to eduacate themselves in cooking after they "sadly" stated that they eat the same dishes every couple of days.

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FOOD LOVING EDUCATION

"We treat cooking and eating good food as sport. You can say we compete with each other, but it is for sure a friendly competition. Its subject would be to surprise each other. It surely brings diversity to our lives and makes our live together less monotonous. On tuesday we ate Tex-Mex style steaks and yesterday we worked together for a perfect neapolitano pasta"

"Cooking and eating is also quite sensual or even erotic, but maybe that's a truism. I really like the fact that it became such an important part of our life. Not only because we indulge in sensual pleasures, but also because we really don't have to think about what to in the eveneings or during the weekends. I would even say that we don't have any spare time anymore - the time we don't spend doing something else, we spend cooking at home".

"When we started cooking we fitrst bought tons of cookbooks by multiple authors from multiple cultures and culinary schools. We really loved, especially that both of us really didn't know anything about cooking and about good ingredients one can use in the kitchen. We were really really green"

"Also our social life was nourished by this change of our culinary patterns and practices and flourished. We started invited friends over for dinner just after we started cooking 'for real'. We all laughed about our fails and always tried dishes that were not exactly perfect, just to discuss improvements to be made. It's funny how fast cooking fun goes semi-professional, at least in terms of attitude"

THE HEALTH ASPECT

"Being diabetic I always had to watch over my diet. My diabetes is not extreme and therefore it didn't real stop me from eating most of the food. But my ignorance in terms of foog chemistry and ingredient chemical composition posed danger to my life a couple of times. Learning cooking and food in general helped me get rid of those threats and dangers".

"We are also deeply convinced that there has been a significant change to our lives after we started to cook and eat consciously. We chose ingredients carefully and in accordance with our individual diet. And the funny thing is that once we started learning cooking and food, a lot of our - both big and small - health problems went away. I guess it must be because of the quality of food we bring into our home".

MY VERY OWN COOKBOOK

"Both of us really love to experiment with recipes and we actually did -- toutes proportiones gardees -- come up with some dishes, mostly by combining some other recipes, that people seem to enjoy much. It real fun, but reaching this requires a lot of patience, as it requires a real lot of attempts and trials".

Agnieszka and Mariusz cooked shrimps for me:

SUMMARY AND FINDINGS: Some food lovers have a sort of discovery-sports attitude. Their social life comes to surprising each other with culinary novelties and leads to creation of individual recipes. They also believe in good food as healthy and like to educate themselves in food in order to know more of the chemical structure of the dishes they consume.

Poland - travelling through food

Anna (51, accountant) and Stanisław (51, CEO)

There is a traditional Polish saying that goes "through stomach to the heart" with no meaning no other than the one in English. I have heard it multiple times while interviewing this middle-age couple in their suburbian house, in Konstancin near Warsaw.

SIMPLICITY THROUGH MODESTY

They both love to cook and their economic status allows them to do that quite often, even up to four or five times a week. They invite close friends, neighbours and some family over for dinner. A big isle kitchen with additional maid help makes their cooking quite exquisite but they "try not to show off to much in order not to embarrass their guests too much". This attitude leads to traditional Polish and Mediterranean cuisine with original additives from the hosts.

HOME COOKING AS PART OF QUALITY LIFE

Anna and Robert immersed into cooking after their turbulent but succesful careers. They first sold one company and started a new on focusing on accounting in times of prosperity acceleration, gaining multiple clients in short time. Robert still works as a CEO of in a Polish branch o pharmaceutical company.

Leaving daily work, they tried to calm concentrating everyday pleasures. They travelled, rebuild their house and cooking became a natural consequence of their eating passion realized throughout the globe. They began bringing back flavourings and condiments from their journeys and cooking exotic dishes at home for their friends as a part of the after-journey storytelling meetings.

They soon realized that travelling "was possible by simply preparing local food with local music playing in the back... and respecting local, even if very exotic, table savoir-vivre customs". This led them to health and quality food retailers in Poland that include ALMA and PIOTR I PAWEL supermarkets present i Polish big cities, local exotic food stores like KUCHNIE ŚWIATA and small local stores with "good food".

We cooked chicken in a thai way:

SHOPPING AND BUTTER

This couple does not shop too often - they usually have somebody doing their shopping for them or event order groceries online. They have a template list in one of the online stores based on the ALMA brand and butter is present there. The brand they chose is MASŁO FIŃSKIE (FINNISH BUTTER) whose design and small-scale communication benefits position it very close to Lurpak. Having a list online, they have their favourite brands already chosen.

They usually buy five packs of butter per week and almost never have to buy butter locally in case of an immediate need, as they also usually have a couple of packs deep frozen. Having no kids, they can allow themselves to concentrate on strong and often unacceptable in Poland tastes while chosing their products either online or in real.

SUMMARY AND FINDINGS

Wealthy food lovers often concentrate on the exotic dimension of the food they prepare and treat cooking exotic dishes as either a way of travelling or a way and/or pretext to tell stories about their travels.

Poland - Girlfriend's quality world

Magda (29, doctoral student, social researcher, Center for Contemporary Arts contributor)

GIRLFRIENDS' EVENINGS

My girlfriends and I meet quite often to "discuss life" and and have some good time together. I think it is both of social importance and of, haha, a 'psychoterapeutical' meaning. .During those evenings, as they happen both in the working week and on weekends, we concentrate on quality pleasures and talks. We talk both problems and passions, life situations and fiction. This is accompanied by good music, often a movie from a projector and/or a couple episodes of American TV series like the "Gossip Girl".

Food is very important for those evenings. Each one of us tries to prepare a special novelty tho share with others. IMaybe it actually is a kind of a contest? I don't know, because even if there is some competitive attitude in it, the rivalry cannot be seen at all. I think that what is really important for us is acknowledging our friends, serving them special, hand-made food of really good quality. IT MIGHT BE THAT THIS IS A WAY OF SAYING THANK YOU TO ONE'S FRIENDS. I love my friends and I want to say it in a more sophisticated manner than literary. Maybe that is what cooking and spending good time around food is all about?

SHOPPING

I shop mostly on a local market in Żoliborz, Warsaw. There is a rumour it might be closed very soon which would be probably my own personal drama as I don't really have an additional good food or market around my place and I won't probably drive far just to get quality butter and eggs for my breakfast.

We made breakfast together:

I look for unique and respected ingredients for my kitchen. I would rather choose something 30% expensive but healthy and tasty than try to save my money on food as it is a real source of one's vital strenght and happiness. I am glad that some day, a couple of years ago, I have met somebody that was a real "health-food-freak", who taught me a lot about cooking and ingredients over just an hour of small talk.

So now, when shopping for food, I read etiquettes and sometimes I even google brands and products on my iPhone, which is a direct way of knowin what and when to buy if I'm to prepare something particular.

I hate supermarkets and the whole modern trade. Cutting costs, they completely neglect the quality of food they serve and/or sell. I think people will eventually loose confidence in big brand foodstores and migrate back to local and (even if a bit more expensive) retailers. And the reatailers will then cut prices as they will sell more and will earn not on single items but on scale, just like the modern trade.

FINDINGS AND OPPORTUNITIES:

Polish young females from our target group gather around cooking and eating for their quality evenings. They neglect modern trade and they often talk about the quality and taste of the ingredients used - modern supermarkets and foodstores are despised and disregarded.

Therefore there might be an opportunity in communicating on site in quality food vendors' places and on local (traditional = healthy) markets with modern retail distribution following.